


Life is Uncertain; Eat Dessert First

by VigilantShadow



Series: Amnesty Prompt Fills [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Amnesty (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, I figure Dani would've been older than like 20 when she got the kids, Kid Fic, Ned and Duck make brief appearances, Prompt Fill, Well - Freeform, and shes had them most of their lives, characters aged up a little bc, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigilantShadow/pseuds/VigilantShadow
Summary: It's just your average Sunday Cookie Lunch, over at Kepler Community Center. Average, aside from the fact that one Aubrey Little meets the most beautiful woman she's ever seen.





	Life is Uncertain; Eat Dessert First

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FaiaHae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/gifts).



> This is a prompt fill for FaiaHae over on Tumblr! You can check it out on [my blog](http://sternspatreon.tumblr.com/post/183619467964/this-was-going-to-be-short-but-you-see-i-love), also.

Aubrey Little was cursed. Definitely cursed. What other explanation could there be for the fact that one of the cutest women she’d  _ever seen_ walked into Kepler Community Center while she was in…this predicament?”

“More beard!” Allison Wilson, ten year old aspiring barber, declared as she smeared more shaving cream – keeping a stock of it was the only way to keep them out of the  _whipped_ cream – up Aubrey’s cheeks. Aubrey ignored the fact that she was literally going to die of embarrassment, right there, crouched amongst a gaggle of elementary schoolers at seven pm on a Tuesday.

She’d hoped to go out doing some badass magic trick, but no. She was cursed.

Aubrey sat there, frozen and staring directly at the mysterious and beautiful stranger, until Duck weaved his way through the tables of parents and kids.

“Hear we were givin’ out beards now?” He asked. Aubrey could tell that it pained him to offer himself up as sacrifice, but he still bravely allowed the mob to climb all over him. She smiled gratefully and gave him a salute, the least she could do given his service to his country – read, her love life – and slipped away.

By the time she’d gotten over to where Ms. Tall, Blonde, and Very, Very Cute was still standing, Aubrey was pretty sure she’d gotten  _most_ of the mess off her face. Up close, the stranger was  _still_ very, very cute, but also weighed down with a kind of exhaustion that could only come from the two identical little girls – five, maybe six  – clinging onto her hands. The girl on the right looked a little impatient, while the one on the left was peering out from her…mother’s? Legs with wide eyes.

Hell, the woman’s eyes were wide too. Aubrey wondered what had her looking so lost. Sure, the gym was chaotic during Sunday Cookie Lunch, but most parents were either eager to try and distract their kids or had developed an immunity to huge messes like this.

“Hey! You new here?” Aubrey asked. The woman jumped a little, then turned to her with a relieved smile.

“Uh, yeah. Kind of?” The girl on the right reached up to tug at her mom’s sleeves. The woman looked down, her long hair falling forward and hiding her face from Aubrey’s sight. Very, very unfortunate.

_Be cool Aubrey. Be cool. She has two kids, she might be taken. Or, oh no, what if their other parent is dead? I can’t be the person that swoops in after a tragedy and steals her heart away I can’t be a rebound that’d be **weird.**_

“It’s lunch time,” the girl announced. There was a whistle on her s’s, and when Aubrey glanced down at her he caught sight of a missing front tooth. Oh no, the kids were  _also_ cute.

“Mhm,” the woman replied, “I thought we could have cookies first, since Barclay’s not here to make us eat it after.”

The little girl’s face lit up, revealing even more gaps in her teeth. She nodded, her curly brown hair bouncing around her head like a bunch of very tiny slinkies. Meanwhile, the other little girl shrunk even further back, mumbling something inaudible into the woman’s leg.

Oh no. Aubrey recognized crisis mode when she saw it.

Thinking fast, she knelt down, reaching into her leather jacket and digging around for the perfect solution. This kid was too young to really appreciate the cards, Aubrey didn’t know whether the – she should really figure out if the woman was her mom, dancing around the word was getting to be exhausting – would appreciate any of her fire tricks. Maybe…yeah, that could work.

“Hey,” she said, keeping a bit of distance from kid on the left, “would you like a flower?”

A second passed, the girl’s fingers tightening around the woman’s hand. Then, just as Aubrey was wondering if maybe acknowledging she existed was a bad move, the girl slowly turned to look at her. She nodded, eyes still wide, and her sister made an excited noise on the other side.

“Okay, then,” Aubrey smiled her stage smile, the one that the Beaverton Daily Gazette called  _dazzling_ and the kids at Kepler Pre-K called her  _super cool wizard smile_. “You  _can’t_ tell anyone I’m giving you guys these, because they’re  _very_ special.”

She pulled two paper flowers out of her jacket with  _just_ the right amount of flourish – too little and they get bored, too much and they think you’re talking down to them – and presented them to the girls.

“That’s tissue paper, silly,” kid on the right said, nose crinkling. Kid on the left gave a nod of agreement. Her hair didn’t bounce like her sister’s did, pulled back into a tight, coiling bun.

Aubrey looked down at the pieces of paper and gasped.

“You’re right! Oh, they must be hiding from me, again.” She shook her head, “they do that sometimes. Maybe I can talk them into coming out, though. But you’re going to need to help me.”

She pulled out a handkerchief, waving it so that it flared dramatically and settled over the two flowers. Then she looked over at each of the girls in turn. Girl on the right met her gaze fearlessly, while girl on the left seemed to be staring at her chin. That was fine, looking in her direction and not about to cry were really the only things Aubrey needed.

“Okay,” Aubrey continued. “I’m going to need you two to convince them they should come out for you. So I’m going to need you two to put your hands on the handkerchief and say the magic word.”

“What’s the magic word?” Girl on the left asked, her voice very small.

The woman laughed softly, deep in her chest.

“I think you know the magic word, Sophie,” she said. Sophie frowned, her tiny little face full of confusion. Then she made a noise of excitement.

“Is it please?”

“Yep,” Aubrey replied, then held out her covered hand to the girl. Lydia reached out tentatively, then settled her fingers butterfly-light on the side of Aubrey’s hand. That would make the trick harder, but Aubrey could work with that. Sophie’s sister had far less hesitation, letting go of the woman’s hand and slapping both of hers over Aubrey’s so hard it almost hurt.

“Okay,” Aubrey said, and didn’t sound affected because it only  _almost_ hurt, and she most definitely wasn’t going to ruin her reputation as a badass punk magician because a little girl got overenthusiastic. “On the count of three, I want you two to say ‘please come out.’ Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Sophie answered softly. Her sister nodded with a confident grin. Aubrey took in both their expressions, because this was  _exactly_ she’d been hoping for. Then she chanced a look up at the woman, and nearly stalled mid-trick.

Her expression was so  _soft,_ deep brown eyes focused on the way her little girl’s hands rested on Aubrey’s. Then her eyes rose to meet Aubrey’s, and both of them blushed. Aubrey added a little quirk to her smile, and the woman smiled back.

“You too, miss,” Aubrey told her, like this was all part of her plan and not just her being hopeless. The woman raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it only works if everyone helps.”

The woman nodded very seriously. Which meant that if she wasn’t the girls’ mom, she probably at least watched them a lot.

“Well, you’re the magician,” she said, reaching out with one long-fingered hand and placing it on top of the kids’. No wedding ring, and no ring tan either.  _Focus Aubrey, that doesn’t mean she’s single. Or that you can come on to moms at **milk and cookies day**_.

“Now that everything’s ready,” Aubrey said, “we can get this started. I need all three of you to look right at the handkerchief, just to make sure I’m not cheating.” Sophie’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Great. Now, with me. Three, two, one-“

Aubrey would normally have used stage magic for this, but she was  _pretty_ sure Sophie had been a couple seconds from full on tears, earlier. Which meant that she hadn’t had time to slide the marigolds she’d gotten Kirby to make for her – the ones with the velvety orange petals – up her sleeve and into the spring mechanism she kept there, let alone to put the release for it into its proper place beside her thumb. Even if she  _had,_ the trick only worked when everyone’s hands were on top of hers. Sophie’s little fingers resting near her thumb meant that hitting the button would have revealed her, and Aubrey was pretty sure touching Sophie’s hand to move it would’ve cause a backslide. Big time.

So instead of reaching for her talents as a stage magician, she reached for her talents as a  _magic_ magician. She waved her free hand, pretending to do some specific hand motion but in reality nudging the wind to lift the fake flowers out of her pocket and send them rocketing down her sleeve. She prayed silently that they wouldn’t get too squished, then set her hand atop the probably-a-mom’s.

“Please come out,” they all said, the little girls slightly off-sync from each other.  Aubrey smiled at them. And at probably-a-mom. As soon as this trick was over, she was getting a name.

“Alright, let’s see if this worked!”

They were not, in fact, too squished. Instead, as the girls pulled their hands away and she turned her hand, the little marigolds sat nestled together in her palm. Sophie and her sister shared a look of awe, so Aubrey gestured at the flowers. The two reached hesitantly forward, each taking one.

“Now,” Aubrey said, as the girls examined their new treasures, “do you promise to take care of these?”

“Yes!” Sophie’s sister exclaimed. Sophie just nodded, hugging her marigold to her chest.

“Alright, then. Now that we’ve done magic together, let’s introduce ourselves.” Aubrey held out a hand, and Sophie immediately took it. “My magic name is The Lady Flame, but since you’re my friends now, you can call me Aubrey.”

Sophie’s sister immediately reached out, gripping onto Aubrey. It was, once again, almost painful. Aubrey hoped she grew up to be some kind of badass, with a grip like that.

“I’m Maddy! It’s short for Madeline Elizabeth Cobb Jr,” Maddy announced confidently. “My magic name is  _also_ Maddy, because Maddy is already the best name.”

“Good. Simple. I like it.” Maddy grinned, and gosh. She had  _dimples._ It was totally unfair that the cute woman had cute kids. As Maddy let go, Sophie took her place, inching away from her mom’s side to shake Aubrey’s hand.

“I’m Sophie. And my magic name is. Um…” She trailed off, eyes widening in panic.

“You don’t need one right now,” Aubrey said hastily. “Magic names are very important, thinking about it for a while is just fine.”

Sophie mumbled something, still staring at Aubrey’s chin. Then she took a deep breath and said, louder.

“Marigold. My magic name is Marigold.”

“Nice to meet you, Sophie slash Marigold.”

Sophie smiled shyly, eyes falling down to the flower in her hand. Aubrey rose to her feet, her thighs complaining about crouching for so long.

“And you, Miss?” She asked, and hoped that she looked cool and not kind of goofy.

“Dani,” the woman said, brushing her hair behind her ear and then taking Sophie’s hand again. “I don’t have a magic name either. I’ll have to ask the girls to help me find one.”

“Well, before that, I think these two deserve some cookies!” Both of the kids nodded, Maddy vibrating with excitement.

“It’s a little…hectic,” Dani mused, then tilted her head meaningfully to Sophie. On cue, Allison barreled past with a mustachioed Duck in pursuit. Sophie jumped, her shoulders creeping up to her ears.

“Yeah.” Aubrey laughed, stepping to the side to block Sophie’s view of as much of the room as possible. “You know, when I first got to Kepler I didn’t know there  _were_ this many kids in town. It used to just be kids from the preschool, but then  _someone,_ ” She leaned around Dani and glared at Ned Chicane in mock annoyance, “started advertising at his museum.”

“That’s, uh, that’s actually how we heard about this. My brother, Jake, he goes by there sometimes to…” Dani gestured meaningfully.

“Oh, Jake! Yeah, I know Jake. He comes to the Saturday Night Dead set sometimes to…” Aubrey gestured meaningfully back, “see Kirby.”

Dani snickered.

“Yeah, to see Kirby.”

It finally clicked. Jake Coolice, who refused to use his real last name because it made his first one sound stupid.  _Jake Cobb._ Aubrey was going to give him  _so_ much shit about that later. After she processed the realization that she was meeting Jake’s older sister, whose ex Jake consistently roasted for dropping her four weeks after said sister’s adoption papers came through. Aubrey tried to grin like a normal, maybe-a-little smitten person instead of like a goofy dork about a woman she’d just met being single.

Sophie made a little anxious noise, which meant Aubrey couldn’t stare into Dani’s eyes for as long as she wanted to.

“ _Anyway,”_ Aubrey leaned back down, “Since you already know my secret magic trick, do you wanna know  _another_ secret?”

“Yes,” Sophie whispered.

“There’s a room nobody’s allowed to go to except special adults,” Aubrey said. “But you two are magic, so I think we can go in this one time. So how about you all wait outside, and I’ll grab us some of the good sweets.”

“How does that sound?” Dani asked, and Aubrey thought Sophie might get whiplash from how fast her head was bobbing up and down. As Dani guided the kids back out of the gymnasium, she looked over her shoulder and mouthed  _thank you._

As soon as they were out of sight, Aubrey let herself scream just a little. Then she realized that was still embarrassing, even if the cause of the scream wasn’t around. She buried her face in her hands, then looked back up and squinted at the cold, wet  _something_ that had  rubbed off her face and onto her fingers.

Shaving cream.

God, she was  _cursed._


End file.
